“SCOPE” at Sentiment, Zürich

Seeing is never just seeing. It is shaped by technology and history, by power, and by the body. Philosopher Elizabeth Grosz reminds us that perception isn’t merely light hitting the eye—it’s both a physical and a social experience. What we see is dictated by what we’re allowed to see, by what’s framed for us, and by what is kept out of sight. Art and visual culture have long challenged the idea that vision is objective, revealing instead how it is always mediated, constructed, and controlled. In a world dominated by advertising, social media, and self-branding, framing becomes everything.

The eye is not only an instrument for seeing. It is also a hole through which desire leaks—a wound, an opening that reveals more than it should. David Moser’s vinyl work on the shopfront window emphasizes this double function of the eye: an aperture to the world and a mirror reflecting the self. This expressionless emoji—an emblem of our digital age, where emojis, avatars, and symbols substitute for actual presence— functions like a mask, allowing one to observe while hoping to remain unseen.

Similarly, Miriam Laura Leonardi’s Brandnew Square reveals as much as it conceals. An old barn fence slices through the space, separating what’s in front from what lies behind, forcing us to peer through its gaps and imagine what’s beyond. It evokes both enclosure and exposure. The billboard-like sign above—clean, corporate, vacant—suggests branding without a brand, a logo without a product. The cracks in the fence and the reflective mirror in place of the sky further complicate the act of looking, turning vision into a negotiation of access and control. Much like Duchamp’s Étant donnés, which compels viewers to peer through a peephole, Leonardi’s work positions the viewer in a state of constrained sight.

In her series of collages, Gaia Del Santo works with images sourced from fashion magazines, where the viewer’s gaze is deliberately framed to provoke fascination and desire. Her passe-partout—frames traditionally used to highlight and enclose images—challenge this visual logic. Instead of emphasizing, they obscure, overlaying the images with vast fields of void. The resulting isolated fragments resemble small openings, windows, or peepholes—offering glimpses rather than clarity.

Scattered throughout the space, Nik Geene’s works interrogate sight and perspective in a different way. His broken eyeglasses compositions are arranged on white A4 drawings that attempt to capture fleeting moments, such as the ever-changing shadow of a radiator on his apartment floor. While the drawings trace ephemeral impressions of light and time, the eyeglasses, stripped of their original function as tools of vision, become sculptural objects in their own right: transparent or tinted lenses paired with metallic or plastic frames, reflecting or obstructing the shifting environment around them.

At the far end of the room, David Moser’s works Echo XS (Extra Small) and Breathing Holes are distinct pieces but operate as a pair. A series of holes—reminiscent of ventilation grilles—are pierced into the wall, introducing permeability and enabling communication beyond the exhibition space. The black surface beneath them acts simultaneously as a reflective plane and a communicative threshold, extending the room’s spatial limits. It evokes a doormat, typically found at the entrance of a home, and also a surface of still, dark water—an invitation to reflection, echoing the myth of Narcissus.

Seeing is never passive; it is always a negotiation—with power, with material conditions, with what is made visible and what is left unseen. What remains hidden can be as revealing as what is shown.

at Sentiment, Zürich
until May 25, 2025